The Baby and the Bath
by Edward Carson
Summary: An idyllic family moment in the Bates' house inadvertently draws John's attention to a tragedy in the past. A disturbing revelation obliges him to make a tough decision about how to address it. This is mostly John Bates introspection flavoured with Anna, John, and baby Robbie enjoying some domestic bliss. POST-SEASON 6.
**The Baby and the Bath**

It was a classic tableau - a beautiful young mother bathing her cherubic child, both of them basking in the glow of each other's love. Many men took this simple, everyday act for granted, but for John Bates it was invested with a deep emotional significance that could not lose its intensity, no matter how many times he saw it.

How long had it taken for them to reach this quintessentially human moment? He wasn't thinking just of their struggle to have a child, though that had been heartache enough in itself. No, his thoughts ranged more broadly than that, to those dark days inhabited by hostile faces he would have expunged from his memory if he could - Inspector Viner, the _valet_ (he would never honour that vile creature by naming him), Vera... Sometimes he'd almost given up hope.

But Anna had kept him going, reminded him with a smile or a gleam in her eye of what a lucky man he was, never surrendered to despair or let him go there either. And they had come through it all. Thank God. So now he could stand in the doorway of the cottage kitchen and watch the most beautiful woman in the world bathe their child, their son, and warm himself in the aura of the miracle of that picture.

The metal tub that Anna used to haul wet clothes to the line in the back garden sat half-filled with warm water in the middle of the kitchen table. Robbie, sitting up on his own for two weeks now, was slapping the water with chubby little hands, dousing Anna. She splashed him right back, sending them both into convulsions of laughter.

He could not have explained to anyone - save Anna and she already understood - how gratifying he found the sound of his son's laughter. John Bates did not laugh often and he never did so easily, not any more. He was occasionally amused and he was capable of a profound sense of joy in those things - those few people - whom he loved. But the capacity for carefree mirth was something he had lost. Watching his son's upturned face split with belly-aching chuckles wasn't just a pleasure; it was a relief. So, taciturnity was _not_ something you inherited.

Reaching for a towel to mop up the puddles Robbie's enthusiasm had made all over the table, Anna's gaze fell on her husband and her face lit up.

"Look, Robbie! It's Dad! John, come and join us."

He groaned, entirely for effect, and pushed off from the doorframe on which he'd been leaning, obeying her but feigning a reluctance he did not feel. Anna insisted on including him in the games she played with Robbie. He always tried to beg off, claiming that he wasn't a natural with children, not like her. It did not surprise him that she would have none of it.

"You'll never be natural if you don't work at it!" she scolded him playfully. He forebore to point out the contradiction in her words. "Here," she said, holding out to him a bar of soap.

"I'm no good at this," he protested, but he took the chair she offered him and focused on his son. He recalled the instructions she'd given him every other time she'd roped him into this, and, dipping his hands into the water, he lathered them up. He let the soap slip through his fingers and then reached for his son's hand, extending the boy's arm, and then running his other hand over the velvety-soft skin of the child's perfect limb.

He _was_ perfection. Every part of him was exquisitely made, and there was not a flaw to be seen nor a blemish to mar him. This fact struck John as forcefully as had the child's laughter, and for the same reasons - in comparison to himself. He had lived with the handicap of his twisted knee for so long that it seemed it had always been with him, rather than the result of an accident of war. The inescapability of his own infirmity made him look upon Robbie's wholeness with almost a sense of awe.

There was no need for him to wash the boy. Robbie was already squeaky clean. But John went through the motions anyway because he knew Anna wanted him to do so, saw this as a bonding moment between father and son. He didn't object. As he worked and played, just a little, with Robbie alternately cooperative or obstructive but never unsmiling, Anna talked. She was full of news from the Abbey.

John listened with half an ear. He ought perhaps to have been more attentive but she would forgive him the distraction of their son. He gave up washing the child and settled in to a game of his own making - squeezing the bar of soap through his wet hands. It popped into the air and then splashed down into the tub, sending Robbie into paroxysms of giggles. John could feel his own face creasing with what was probably a soppy grin. Had he been anywhere else, been in any other company, he would have felt foolish. But here, in this moment, it seemed right. He relaxed into the diversion, getting his hands quite wet, soaping up the bar a little so that it slipped through his hands more easily, spinning it higher, splashing water everywhere.

"...-dy Mary says the price of wheat is looking up, which is good news..."

He was more delighted than ever he could have imagined to have a child. _Wanting_ was one thing, but it was an abstraction that could not approach the concrete satisfaction of _having_.

"...Talbot and Mr. Branson are moving ahead with their plans for..."

John Robert Bates. ***** He was proud of the name they had given him. He liked the idea of his son carrying his name, but it also meant a lot to him to honour His Lordship, one of the few men he had ever really respected. And yet the boy wouldn't stand in the shadow of either man. He was Robbie, reflecting both but distinct from them, too.

"...and Mrs. Carson says Mr. Carson was interested in the idea, which could lead to even bigger things for him, who knows?"

"Oops!" He'd overshot with the soap and it went careening across the table. Robbie thought this was hilarious. John caught Anna rolling her eyes at him. "It slipped," he said innocently, but with a glint in his eye. And then he went to work at doing it again, encouraged by Robbie's reaction. He and the boy would have a time of it together in a few years.

"...aren't going so well at the hospital. Dr. Clarkson has had some..."

The soap, slicker now than ever, was getting more difficult to position properly.

"...convinced that this is in the best interests of the village, but..."

There. He had it. And the bar shot out of his hands like an artillery shell, tumbling through the air.

"...looks like its heading for a bit of a ..."

He lunged, trying to scoop it up in mid-air, and just grazed it with his fingers, knocking it wide of the table altogether.

"Anna! Look out for the..."

"...but in Her Ladyship's..."

"Soap!" He leaped to his feet and thrust an arm out before her. Crossing the floor with her arms full of folded laundry, she collided with him and almost lost her balance, dropping the sheets to the floor.

"John! You almost knocked me over!" She was mildly irritated with him as she bent over to pick up the sheets. Her eyes returned to his as she straightened up and a tremor of fear came over her, for his eyes were wide with alarm and his face bloodless.

"John? What is it?"

"Nothing," he said quickly, hollowly. His eyes dropped to the floor. "Don't move for a minute." He bent awkwardly, looking for the errant soap.

She sighed and jostled him aside. With a fluid movement, she crouched, scooped up the bar, and then was standing straight before him again, the now-crumpled sheets in one arm, the soap in her hand extended toward him. There was a bit of an exasperated look on her face.

"That's what happens when you get carried away," she said, and then frowned a little. "John? Is something wrong?" She put the sheets down on the counter by the sink and turned to him again.

He forced himself to smile. "Nothing," he said easily, his voice persuasively steady. "I can be so clumsy sometimes."

She gave him a sceptical look, but then Robbie called out and she looked to their son. "Look at you, you little prune! I think you've been in the bath long enough!" She picked up the towel and wrapped it around him, lifting him up as she did so. His animated gurgling suggested that he enjoyed being tousled by his mother as much as he'd relished playing in the bath.

"I'll clean up in here," John offered.

"Leave that tub for me!" Anna told him, heading for the door. She paused there for a moment, glancing back at him uncertainly. "You look like the cat that swallowed the canary," she said. But then she smiled and left the room.

Guilty. That's what she meant. He slumped into a chair and put a hand to his face. Well, it was guilt, of a sort. But that was the least troubling part of it.

 _Her Ladyship's...soap_.

The phrase came back to him from the unsatisfactory dénouement to his own happy return to Downton following his release from prison. Thomas Barrow, displaced by that event, was on his way out and good riddance. But a complication had developed. As a result of an indiscreet incident involving footman Jimmy Kent, Barrow was to be dismissed without a reference. The whole thing smelled foul to John, whose reluctance to interfere in the affairs of his co-workers was overcome by a commitment to justice, even for Barrow, whom he despised. Investigation revealed that the odious Miss O'Brien, Her Ladyship's lady's maid, was at the heart of it, but even knowing this, Barrow had failed to rise to his own defense, too beaten down by Jimmy's complicity. John had taken up the cause - _on principle_ , not for Barrow's sake - and secured from the dejected Barrow the weapon to carry the battle. It had come in the form of three words, wholly meaningless to John but significant enough to turn Miss O'Brien white as a sheet and spur her to rectify the situation without delay.

Until moments ago, the memory of this incident prompted only self-disgust in John. He'd acted at least in part to facilitate Barrow's departure, but His Lordship had inexplicably taken a hand in righting downstairs affairs and instead promoted Barrow to under-butler, a position technically superior to John's own post as valet. He had vowed then that it would be a cold day in hell before he did Barrow another favour.

 _Her Ladyship's soap._

They had been nonsense words as far as John - or Anna - was concerned, at the time. But this had been, he now realized, because they had no context. The very innocent events in his own kitchen, years after the fact, had suddenly presented him with the frame of reference that had been lacking before.

In that fateful summer of 1914, the family had returned from the London Season flushed with the success of Lady Sybil's presentation at Court to the startling revelation that Her Ladyship was pregnant. It was news with widespread ramifications. The critical element was the question that could not be answered: would it be a boy? They had the answer too soon, tragically soon, for only weeks later Her Ladyship had suffered a miscarriage brought on by a fall when she slipped on a bar of soap as she was getting out of her bath.

It was an accident. No one had ever suggested otherwise. And yet a cryptic reference to the incident (Could _"Her Ladyship's soap"_ allude to anything else?!) had put the fear of God into Sarah O'Brien as - Bates could attest to this - nothing else had. Blackmail had induced her to act where reason and an appeal to compassion had not. Yet innocent people did not react to blackmail. There was something ominous about the words " _Her Ladyship's soap_ ," and now John had a pretty good idea what it was and the thought sickened him.

"You're brooding," Anna said to him later in the evening.

"I'm not. I'm just being stoic. There's a difference."

She smiled, but it was a weak effort. "You're brooding," she reiterated. "You know I don't like to see that. It always makes me worry."

This made _him_ smile. "What have I got to brood about?" he demanded, and then drew her into a reassuring hug. He followed this up with a kiss that could not in any way be described as reassuring, but that gave her a reason to smile.

"You've had a long day," he said. "Go to bed. I'll take the first watch."

She laughed at this. Robbie was sleeping through the night. But she was tired. "Don't let whatever's on your mind keep you up late," she cautioned him, letting him know that she wasn't entirely convinced by what he had said.

He watched her go upstairs, listened for her footsteps in Robbie's room, and then heard her light tread as she moved on into their room. He put out the downstairs lights and went to sit in his chair by the dying glow in the grate. He would have to work this out before morning. She wouldn't be put off forever.

They had promised they would have no more secrets between them, he and Anna. Too much discretion had played havoc with their lives. But on this question she was not the only consideration. Anna was too open, found it impossible to conceal any strong emotion. She couldn't dissemble. And she was close to Lady Mary, even more so now that they both had babies. Babies heightened the emotional tension at the best of times. Anna would never be able to keep the secret and Lady Mary was temperamentally unlikely to keep _this_ one.

It was too awful to contemplate and John had known enough awful things in his life with which to compare it. The prospect that O'Brien had _deliberately_ set a trap for Her Ladyship, whether or not she meant to cause her to miscarry, was appalling. But could he make this assumption? He remembered some tension between the two after the arrival at Downton of His Lordship's heir apparent, Matthew Crawley. Miss O'Brien had spoken against him and Her Ladyship had publicly rebuked her for it, humiliating her before them all in the servants' hall. Bates had subsequently heard a few snatches of conversation between O'Brien and Barrow in the courtyard that suggested O'Brien harboured resentment over it. Was this enough? It might just be. The single fact of the impact of the phrase - _Her Ladyship's soap_ \- on O'Brien testified to this. There was, of course, someone who _could_ confirm it and that was Thomas Barrow. But he'd not say anything about it, not now that he was butler of Downton Abbey. He'd never admit that he had known about it then and said nothing. John wasn't one to condemn another without foundation, but everything just fit together too smoothly for him to put it aside easily.

There were other elements to consider. What useful purpose would be served by bringing it up now? The calamity had occurred more than a decade ago, a family tragedy in the shadow of Europe's greatest tragedy. But the past would not remain in the past if new information emerged. Children lost - by miscarriage, still birth, disease, disappearance - were never forgotten. They had an emotional hold on their loved ones that made their passing distinct from other losses. What damage might result from disinterring these delicate bones!

He ought perhaps to have thought of Her Ladyship first. But John's mind went instead to His Lordship. The mother's pain would be great, but he felt a kinship of sorts in this to Robert Crawley. He'd seen His Lordship's face that day, crumpled in anguish over his lost child, his first child to die before its time. He knew His Lordship well enough to read his emotions. There was no material consideration in his sobbed announcement, "It _was_ a boy." There was only the devastation of expectation and anticipation of new life brutally dashed away. John had felt like this when Anna confessed her miscarriages.

 _More secrets_.

Now that it seemed likely - he wouldn't say clear - that Robert Crawley's son had died by an act of deliberate maliciousness, how would the man react? John didn't know. Everyone was different. But he himself had known the wellspring of primal fury against those who had imperiled the one whom he held dearest. He had felt an instinctive impulse to violence against Vera when she had derailed his attempts to pursue happiness with Anna, more angry with her for Anna's sake than his own. He had, in mindless anguish, gone much farther down that road with ... the _valet_ ...who had brutalized Anna, pulling back from the brink too precipitously for the comfort of his own conscience. He had known the poison of hatred in his soul.

John could not speak for His Lordship in this, but he feared for him in the event that this information - even in its flawed incompleteness - should come to his attention. He feared for the pain it would resurrect, for the divided soul such a revelation might spawn in the otherwise even-tempered Robert Crawley. There could be no satisfactory resolution. The only possible criminal charge would be negligence, not murder, or even manslaughter. Miss O'Brien was not immediately to hand either, having de-camped to India a few years ago. The frustration might drive His Lordship to actions he might regret, but would certainly ignite in him a relentless torment from which there would be no meaningful relief.

He spent an uneasy night in the chair by the fading coals, his discomfort the result of his mental exertions, not his circumstances. And by morning he had his answer.

"You never came to bed!" Anna scolded him, when she stirred him from sleep at daybreak.

"I fell asleep," he confessed sheepishly, though he did not tell her that it was well into the morning hours before he had done so.

"Did you figure it out?"

"What?"

"The weighty matter that kept you up."

"I did," he said lightly, his tone not quite a lie.

Justice wasn't always possible. Sometimes you had to accept that and let it go. Sarah O'Brien, wherever she was, was the only person who knew exactly what had happened on that sunny summer afternoon in 1914. And she was the one who had to live with it. Although he had despised her, John did not think she was wholly without conscience. It wasn't the way things ought to end. She ought to be made to pay in law for the grief she had inflicted in what might have been a spontaneous act of spite. But there were no practical means by which this might be made to happen.

Were he to bring this matter to His Lordship's attention, even if Barrow could be made to talk, the result would only be grief and heartbreak for the Crawleys and they would relive again their personal tragedy of the summer before the war, without any hope of resolution. The one thing John wouldn't do would be to relieve his own conscience of the burden of sorrow and shock by inflicting that pain on them. It would sit more easily on his shoulders. Sometimes bearing a burden for someone else was the right thing to do.

 *** Author's Note:** Robert John Bates is the name chosen by _lemacd_ and used by _Chelsiesouloftheabbey_ as a courtesy gesture to her in the story "New Era Indeed." I have used it here for consistency with that story and as a nod to _lemacd_ , who is a generous reviewer.

 **Note to** _ **lemacd:**_ I hope I've done your Mr. Bates justice here.


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